Richard Dawkins Now A Heretic To Progressives

This is symbolically big. According to the e-mail the progressive radio station KPFA, the event’s sponsor, sent out explainint its decision:

We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.

KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier.

Ladies and gentlemen, the vanguard of Progressivism.

It is interesting to know that in the eyes of progressives like these, some religions are more worthy of consideration than others. Islam, generally speaking, is vastly more illiberal than Christianity. Somehow, though, Islam falls under the protecting veil of progressivism.

Mind you, I haven’t seen Dawkins’s tweets on Islam, but based on some of his past tweets about Christianity, I would not be surprised if he were bigoted against Islam. But then, Dawkins hates all religion, so at least he’s consistent. Anyway, in no way should Dawkins be silenced. Let him speak his mind, and let us meet him with better arguments.

It is interesting that a Berkeley church agreed to host one of the world’s best-known atheist abusers of Christianity. Within another decade or two, that church building will probably be turned into condos.

Is there a place in the US less open to free speech than the San Francisco Bay Area? Serious question. Richard Dawkins could come speak in Baton Rouge, where I live, and get a respectful hearing — even here in the heart of Trumpsylvania. But not Berkeley. What does that tell you?

87 Responses to Richard Dawkins Now A Heretic To Progressives

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this nonsense about how the Muslims need a “reformation.” Really? The Reformation in Western Christianity initiated a century of internecine religious conflict, increasing scriptural literalism and fundamentalism, and an increasing intransigence on both (or all) sides until people were so sick of the violence that they called ceasefire. I think a good argument can be made that the emergence of radical Islam *IS* the reformation in Islam.

It’s also such a crude, infantilizing view of religion, as if it’s a light switch that you can turn off and on and modulate the light. Religions have their own internal logic, you can’t just “make” them have a reformation when you feel like it.

As it happens, I think Islam shares the left’s strong emphasis on social justice. And similarly, at its finest moments Christianity has been on the side of the poor and oppressed. The right, on the other hand, has often been on the side of authority and of the rich.

Khalid,

Generalizing about entire religions, especially when they’re not your own, is a tricky thing. Nonetheless, if I had to list a few things I admired about Islam it wouldn’t be too difficult. As you point out the emphasis on social justice is something I like but that’s shared with Christianity. As far as uniquely Islamic innovations go, I actually really like “Islamic finance” as an innovation to solve the problem of usury. (It’s not the solution I would choose, but it’s certainly better than treating it as a non-problem, which is the route that majority-Christian America has chosen to go down). And as another example I like the way Islam has paid careful identification to documentation of the ‘chain of custody’ for the hadiths, this is the kind of thing Christian intellectuals wish we had for the New Testament books and for early traditions but that with a few exceptions we really don’t. Both of these are areas where Christians could learn a lot from Islam.

Could I humbly suggest you take a look at C. Calhoun’s The Roots of Radicalism? And leftists in Russia were, before Communism, actually known for being loyal to the land, tradition.

Grigory Ioffe, the Soviet émigré scholar, actually thinks this was true (at the subconscious more than the conscious level) of the Soviet Communists themselves. A very high proportion of Communists (the mid- and lower-level functionaries, not the top leaders themselves) was apparently of peasant origin, and he thinks that they internalized a lot of the values of the Russian peasant worldview (minus the religion, obviously).

Nonsense. The left IS a traditional European identity. Even African and Asian leftists got their politics at British and French universities. And one difficulty for socialism in America was that, despite the many home grown Anglo socialists, it was associated with all the European furriners bringing an alien ideology to our hallowed shores.

“The idea that the prominent atheists — the so-called Four Horsemen — give Islam a pass is a pernicious myth.”

VikingLS: “It is? Amongst whom?”

Here’s an example of the myth in action:

If I remember correctly, Dawkins has in recent comments opined, at long last, that some religions are “worse than others”, and that Christianity is benign relative to Islam. Many Dawkins’ keeners were shocked that he had thus let down his guard on the threat posed by our faith.

Bolding mine.

One of Dawkins’ earliest salvos in the New Atheist battle was an op-ed on Sept 15, 2001 with the title Faith-based Missiles that blamed Islam for the 9/11 hijackers.

Note: I’m not defending the op-ed (it is terrible). I am defending the idea that The New Atheists have criticized Islam since their movement began.

Barely a week goes by where a commenter on this blog does not say something along the lines of “Ha ha ha. These atheists think they are so brave criticizing Christianity! Let’s hear them criticize Islam! Not so brave now are they?”

The New Atheists have criticized Islam since the beginning. Heck, Sam Harris has made it his speciality.

Sorry for the broken quote in my previous post. I should have exercised more care.

For possibly the first time ever, I agree with Polichinello.

The point is he could bad-mouth and criticize Christianity at will, and no one batted an eye. He was even praised for it. But he uses similar terms of criticism for Islam, and, WHOA! Invite pulled.

This is deplorable and makes me mad.

The broader point to be made here is that the left is not a monolith. This is not the left turning on itself because there is no such entity as “The Left”.

Rod often reminds me of that cartoon, The View from Ninth Avenue where he can make out the fine distinctions between, say Orthodox belief and Catholic belief but when he looks out across the Hudson, there’s a vast plain of indistinguishable beliefs.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m endlessly fascinated by what Rod has to say and I’ve been reading him since the Beliefnet days. I do get a little frustrated by his lack of nuance when he talks about The Left” though. I think his points would land more powerfully if he aimed them with more precision. I might also hope that he would relax a little about the threats to Christians and Christianity if he acknowledged the diversity of opinions among those who don’t share his beliefs.

The problem is that they believe too much in that, raising their own opinion to the status of Established Truth, and deriding as idiots anyone who does not accept their pontifications. There really is an element of subjectivity in knowledge– it no where near as vast as some posit, but it is not exactly zero as either as Dawkins seems to think.

The postmodernist wheel of truth:

* The social sciences are but an application of the biological sciences
* The biological sciences are but an application of the physical sciences
* The physical sciences are but an application of metaphysics
* And metaphysics is simply an application of social science.

Oh, good grief no! It isn’t Islam that is “protected” but Muslims, to the extent they are under threat from anti-Muslim bigotry. There’s a big difference there, a very big one.
And Richard Dawkins, in my own experience, has never been well liked on the Left. He’s too small-minded, too intolerant, too dismissive of other people’s experiences. The fundamental epistemology of the Left is the notion that truth is subjective (I am not endorsing that just reporting it). Dawkins proclaims his atheism as a hard cold fact that everyone should recognize. That is as anathema on the Left as any religious sort of fundamentalism.

Did you read this interview with Muslim atheist Ali Rizvi (i.e. an atheist who grew up in an Islamic society and culture; and unlike Dawkins has to worry about someone deciding he is an apostate and trying to snuff him):

Richard Dawkins is entirely certain, I’m sure, that neither of the aformentioned deities (ignoring the theological view that holds that “Yahweh” and “Allah” are in fact one and the same) exists at all.

“Is there a place in the US less open to free speech than the San Francisco Bay Area?”

As a 3rd generation Bay Area native and resident for all of my years on this earth I would say: it depends. In San Francisco you can walk around completely naked because it’s considered an expression of freedom of speech. Protesters frequently shut down freeways and transit systems with very little police response because it is considered their freedom of speech. During Bush’s term and the Iraq War, a group of old gray ponytails would protest at a big intersection in my home town every Thursday. No one really paid attention to them after a while and they just kinda faded into the background.
That being said, when former Gov Pete Wilson spoke at a private event, protesters stormed the gates of the private venue and shut down the event. A friend who was a Berkeley College Republican told me about being frequently harassed and having their table overturned when they would set up a table in the quad. I was once given quite a colorful earful about then candidate Trump from a legal immigrant from Mexico who was also a Vietnam Combat Veteran while running a table at the county fair for the local GOP. I also know quite a few conservatives that have held demonstrations in their local communities with little opposition and even robust support.
To sum it up: I think that no-platforming and outright hostility to non-SJW leftism is something you are more likely to see in SF, Bezerkeley, Oakland, and occasionally San Jose. Those are the cities that have activists and politicians most dedicated to SJW leftism. In most of the suburbs, and with most of the working and disappearing middle classes in the aforementioned cities, people are just too busy working to make rent in an area with a high cost of living. Unless you block the freeway, they have more important things to worry about.

It puzzles me that materialist atheists should care about anything at all, much less feminism/Islamophobia/etc. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to prefer one particular configuration of matter and energy in spacetime over any other.

That quote didn’t imply that Dawkins had given Islam a pass, just that he had come around to seeing some religions as worse than others. You also didn’t cite atheists generally being accused of giving Islam a free pass, but specifically the Four Horseman.

Sorry but I’d be amazed at anyone who knew enough about New Atheism to know who the Four Horsemen were, who didn’t know that they’d all been very critical of Islam.

“Yeah, thats what liberals say to me when I try to explain conservative or Christian thinking on some issue.”

Well if you start out with “I don’t know why this is so hard to understand…” and followed it with your explanation of a Christian position, you probably annoyed them too.

“I don’t know why this is so hard to understand: Most progressives don’t like Islam, they just think it’s more deserving of protection in the US than Christianity because it represents less than 1% of the population while Christianity represents 70%.”

I believe you believe this. I don’t believe this is is necessarily the position of progressives.

The key thing Islam has going for it, from the CultMarx Left’s perspective, is that it’s anti-Christian. Never mind it’s anti-gay and anti-woman too–“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. It’s practitioners are essentially the shock troops against us deplorables on both sides of the Atlantic.

It puzzles me that materialist atheists should care about anything at all, much less feminism/Islamophobia/etc. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to prefer one particular configuration of matter and energy in spacetime over any other.

You do realize that Plato addressed that conundrum, like, twenty-four centuries ago, right?

Either right and wrong are ‘ultimate’, i.e. they’re their own explanation, or they don’t exist. Postulating a God doesn’t really affect how you answer that question one way or the other.

Rod often reminds me of that cartoon, The View from Ninth Avenue where he can make out the fine distinctions between, say Orthodox belief and Catholic belief but when he looks out across the Hudson, there’s a vast plain of indistinguishable beliefs.

I agree, but is there any of us who’s free from tht problem? Certainly not me. I think the point of the New Yorker cartoon is that we’re all myopic in exactly the analogous way.

As an atheist and revolutionary socialist, I loathe Sam Harris and Bill Maher because they are apologists for U.S., Western and Israeli imperialism and violence, they inflate the size of Islamist terrorism as a percentage of overall terrorism in Europe and America, dismiss “feminist obsession over some clinic bombing 20 years ago” as if George Tiller wasn’t gunned down in his church in 2009, and fail to acknowledge the many good works done out of religious faith, not to mention the martyrdom of some of those folks. They give atheism a bad name.

@VikingLS
Well if you start out with “I don’t know why this is so hard to understand…” and followed it with your explanation of a Christian position, you probably annoyed them too.

Yeah, I tend to start off mildly offending people so they’ll argue with me rather than ignoring or politely agreeing with me. We all have our character flaws.

I believe you believe this. I don’t believe this is is necessarily the position of progressives.

Progressives are a diverse group just like conservatives. The majority of the left leaning people I know hold this view, but it’s a biased sample (mostly highly educated people working in the education, science, tech, or medical sectors of big cities). I don’t have any real idea what red state progressives are like because all my red state friends and family are conservatives. I can imagine them being more reactionary since they live in “enemy territory”.

Thank you for those kind words. I personally think there is much one can learn from other people ( whether Christian, Jewish or non- religious). Too many to note here but Merton would certainly be up there. Rowan williams, too.

For Muslim orthodoxy I think Christianity has always been associated with gentleness and humility. For the Sufis Christ is the way of love. And as someone once said, if you see love, you’ll see it everywhere.

The idea of a reformation doesn’t make much sense in the Islamic context given the lack of a central authority. I’m also a bit sceptical of the reading that implies that it was nothing but fundamentalist.mreading Rowan’s Anglican Identities now and it is obviously a lot more than that. I think Chares Taylor has also written on this..we’re looking at a different expression of spirituality.

Em..guys its KPFA. A byword in the Bay Area for nasty vicious lying hypocrites. Mostly from an affluent middle class / wealthy background. At best utter loons and cranks, but mostly truly vile people.

All you need to know about these KPFA people is that one of the sweetest most wonderful people I’ve known was almost beaten to death by one of their staff. After years of the most vicious domestic violence, torture really, in front of very young children. But during the trial the KPFA people could not praise the perp loudly enough, because of all his “progressive” political activities over the years. As far as I’m aware not a murmur of support from the KPFA people for the victim of the sustained violent abuse. But instead of going to jail for attempted murder with special circumstances the prep eventually got off on a legal technicality. Because his family were wealthy (typically) he could afford expensive lawyers who eventually got him off on the technicality. Afterwards he was welcomed back with open arms by KPFA and he is still listed as a member of staff.

And this is not the first time stuff like this has happened. In fact the most horrific abuse stories and the various “progressive” political factions have been pretty much synonymous over the decades in the Bay Area. If you have lived in the Bay Area long enough you will have heard at least some of them. But the local media makes sure these stories are usually buried.

KPFA and the people who support it are evil scum. There really is no other words for them.

Still, I should reiterate, I’m not much interested in what Dawkins has to say about any religious tradition, as the man doesn’t do his homework. I gave his brand of know-nothing pontificating more than enough attention back when the New Atheism was new.

The Leftoids that are not just SJWs (and some who are, re Laci Green) are moving Right simply because the Left, the True Left, the Hard Left, the Leftover Left that is more and more in charge of things at the DNC and culturally, are choking them off. At the least the Leftists are annoying even to other Leftists.

Muslims are murdering atheists from Pakistan to the EU (Charlie Hebdo murders). It is rational for him to speak out against a religion that not only hates atheists but is killing people like him and rolls back human rights everywhere the religion (Islam) dominates.

I would like to challenge (in a respectful way!) the non-Muslims here to answer these questions regarding Shari’ah/Islamic/Allah’s law and universal human rights for Muslims living in Western countries:

1. Do you support Allah’s law as mandatory for all Muslims? Even for those Muslims who don’t believe it’s all divine in origin and authority?
2. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims from leaving Islam on threat of death – Do you believe this is desired by Allah (swt)?
3. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims from dissenting from said law and encouraging other Muslims to dissent from Allah’s law?
4. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims interpreting the Holy Qur’an by the lights of their own individual reason and conscience?
5. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting novel interpretation of Islam or the Holy Qur’an?
6. Do you support Allah’s law in the death sentence for active LGBT Muslims?

t Smith: Based on experience with other of the self-declared righteous, I can believe your account completely. today, the most agreeable mob in the US for the evil to join and use are the Progs. They are the modern witch hunters, flying under a different flag of convenience.

@Hector: “You do realize that Plato addressed that conundrum, like, twenty-four centuries ago, right?
Either right and wrong are ‘ultimate’, i.e. they’re their own explanation, or they don’t exist. Postulating a God doesn’t really affect how you answer that question one way or the other.”

True, but I think the point made in regard to the New Atheists is that it is bizarre to hold to some sort of hyper-materialist perspective, grounded only in the empirical knowledge of the physical universe, then entertain such an idea of an “ultimate” morality.

Why heap scorn upon scorn on religion and the belief in a permanent, changeless god that exists outside the confines of the material world, then turn around and believe in any sort of moral order that must also exist independent of the material? Whether we are talking about god or the objective morality of the universe, both would seem to be on the same plane of existence – a place the materialism of the New Atheists is woefully unprepared to go.

I would like to challenge (in a respectful way!) the non-Muslims here to answer these questions regarding Shari’ah/Islamic/Allah’s law and universal human rights for Muslims living in Western countries:

1. Do you support Allah’s law as mandatory for all Muslims? Even for those Muslims who don’t believe it’s all divine in origin and authority?
2. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims from leaving Islam on threat of death – Do you believe this is desired by Allah (swt)?
3. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims from dissenting from said law and encouraging other Muslims to dissent from Allah’s law?
4. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting Muslims interpreting the Holy Qur’an by the lights of their own individual reason and conscience?
5. Do you support Allah’s law in prohibiting novel interpretation of Islam or the Holy Qur’an?
6. Do you support Allah’s law in the death sentence for active LGBT Muslims?

No, no, no, no, no, and no.

But where does universal human rights for Muslims require supporting any of that? Part of “universal human rights for Muslims” includes protecting Muslim dissenters, Muslim-born gays, Muslim critics, Muslim women, and so forth from traditionalists and their fatwas.

Just like–drumroll–supporting the religious liberties of Christians does NOT mean that the law needs to entertain traddy attempts to harass or inconvenient those THEY consider sinners–freely noting that trad Christians FTMP (a few nutball preachers notwithstanding) are not calling for the heads of those they disagree with?

This isn’t hard, folks. Protecting the civil rights of MUSLIMS doesn’t require endorsing ISLAM or it’s worst interpretations. I don’t support Sharia law, or Christian theocracy, or any other system by which one religious faith is allowed to impose its values via force of law–either on its own members or on the public. I do support the rights of individual Muslims or Christians.

A lot of people who act and think like your description of KPFA staff tend to accrete around a revolution. Serious revolutionaries recognize them as a liability, since the mass of the population has a low tolerance for it.